Bridging the Gap
by ImpishTubist
Summary: Sherlock prefers to text. Lestrade prefers to call. They compromise - and Lestrade learns to text. Friendship fic.


Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Notes: Written by request for someone who wanted a story about Sherlock having to teach Lestrade something about technology.

Originally written and posted: November 2011.

* * *

><p><em>I need to see those files.<em>

Lestrade heaved an irritated sigh and dialed Sherlock's number. The man answered, but only long enough to snap, "I prefer to text," and hang up again.

Dammit.

Well, then, he wasn't getting his files, that was for sure.

xxxx

_I've solved your case, no thanks to you. Text me._

Lestrade called.

Sherlock didn't answer.

xxxx

_Bored._

Lestrade ignored the text.

_Still bored._

He set his phone to silent.

_Still bored, and now out of milk._

He turned his mobile off and tossed it in the back of his desk drawer, where he was unlikely to reach for it and check obsessively for messages.

This was getting out of hand.

xxxx

"We need to talk."

It occurred to Lestrade, a moment later, that Sherlock's presence in his flat shouldn't have been all that surprising. He'd given up long ago on changing his locks, because it did little good. For the past three years, ever since they'd met, Sherlock had always come and gone as he pleased. He'd even come in the middle of the night more than once, and Lestrade had woken to experiments exploding in his kitchen or, on one memorable occasion, two dozen dead rats in his freezer.

It shouldn't have been all that surprising, no. It definitely didn't warrant him starting badly, stumbling backwards, and slamming his back into the door he'd just closed.

"Christ, Sherlock," he hissed, reaching for a light switch. He saw then that the detective was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in his living room, fingers steepled, ankle crossed over his knee. "Was that necessary?"

"Yes."

Lestrade rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, sighed, and said, "Right, the case. What've you got for me?"

"It was the butler," Sherlock said shortly and didn't elaborate further, which was odd. Usually he reveled in his reveals, drawing them out as long as he could, delighting in his audience's bafflement and grudging awe. "But that's not why I'm here."

"Oh?" Lestrade tossed his jacket across the back of a chair and strode into the kitchen. Sherlock was on his feet in an instant, following. "Then why are you here? Except to irritate me, of course."

"You need to learn how to text."

Lestrade opened the fridge, saw nothing appealing, and shut it again. At least it didn't contain body parts, he tried to tell himself, but it didn't contain anything edible, either. When had he even been to the shops last?

"Lestrade, are you listening to me?" Sherlock said sharply.

"Why do I need to learn how to text? Calling works just fine. Well, when you answer."

"Not the point," Sherlock snapped. "I prefer to text."

"And I prefer to call."

"How am I ever to contact you if you refuse to text?"

"Breaking in to my flat seems to be just as effective. Or my office; you've done that a number of times as well." Lestrade rummaged through his cupboards. Tea would have to suffice tonight.

"And you only tolerate it because it's usually regarding a case." Sherlock's lips thinned and he lifted his chin defensively. "What about instances where crime isn't involved?"

"Why would you want to -" Lestrade stopped abruptly and occupied himself with putting a kettle on, buying a few seconds to think. Sherlock wanted to keep in contact; wanted to make sure Lestrade would answer him. Sherlock, a man who might as well have been made of marble for all the emotion he expressed, and here he had broken into Lestrade's flat because he was concerned about...about what, exactly? Lestrade only keeping him around because he was useful?

Lestrade had often wondered about Sherlock's past; about the years he wasn't privy to, the years before he met the detective. He wondered about the man's family; to his knowledge, Sherlock was close to no one. Even his brother was kept at arms' length, though given the man's penchant for kidnapping, Lestrade felt this was probably a wise move on Sherlock's part. So who did Sherlock have?

Well, he had Lestrade, for what it was worth. There was no point trying to deny that anymore.

"All right." He fished his mobile out of his pocket and tossed it at Sherlock. "Go on. Show me how to use that thing."

Sherlock's face melted into his usual look of disdain. "It amazes me that a man so inept at technology has advanced as far as you have at the Yard. It's a wonder you can even return my emails."

"Hey," Lestrade cautioned. "I said you could teach me. I didn't say that was also permission to insult me more often than you normally do. And I get by, thank you very much."

"This is your power button," Sherlock started, pointing, and Lestrade scowled.

"I'm not _that _inept."

"That remains to be seen. Now, this is your cursor," Sherlock said, flipping open the phone indicating the circle just above the number keys. "You can use it to move around. See?"

"Yes, Sherlock, I do know how to operate this thing."

"Obviously not. Do you even read my texts?"

"Yes!" Lestrade said, a tad defensively. "They pop up when I open the phone; don't think I could ignore them if I tried."

"Fine, we'll go from there." Sherlock handed him the phone. "Open one of the texts I sent you earlier."

Lestrade sighed, snatched the mobile from him, and keyed over to an icon that looked promising. And then he cursed under his breath.

"Close," Sherlock said sarcastically. "Really, very close. You were only slightly wrong, as opposed to glaringly off. _That_is the icon for text messages, not this one."

"That doesn't even look like the correct icon. What's that supposed to be, anyway?"

"Don't question it; just listen," Sherlock sighed. "Click on that icon...right. Now, respond to one of my messages."

"And how'm I supposed to do that?"

"By - oh, for heaven's - look, scroll down to one of my messages...no, any one, doesn't matter. Now, open it. All right, now you can respond to it."

Lestrade tried a few keys experimentally. Nothing happened. Sherlock made a sound that halfway between a sigh and a whimper.

"No, you have to use the cursor to move to the reply button at the bottom of the screen. Then you can type a response. No, it's over - here -" Sherlock walked over to a drawer and opened it. He snatched out the pair of reading glasses Lestrade pretended he didn't own - and certainly hadn't told anyone about - and slipped them onto Lestrade's face before the DI could muster a protest. He settled for looking indignant; Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow and said, "Type."

"How?"

"What do you mean, how?"

"I mean," Lestrade said, waving the mobile under his nose, "that there are ten keys and twenty-six letters. Now. How the hell am I supposed to type a message on this thing?"

"Good God, Lestrade, how do you even manage to get by during the day?" Sherlock muttered. "You punch the key the number of times that are necessary to reach that letter - three times on the _1_ key for _c_, because it's the third letter on that key. Two times for _e_ on the _2 _key, because that letter is in the second position. Do you see?"

Lestrade mulled this over for a moment. He tapped out a couple of letters experimentally - ah! It worked. How about that.

"Then how do you manage to get those messages to me so quickly?"

Sherlock snorted. "I doubt you would be able to understand."

"Try me, sunshine."

Sherlock considered him a moment, and then finally said, "I have a full keyboard on my mobile."

He pulled it out and waved it at Lestrade. "Yours is different, but you could still manage it. There's a setting that allows you to spell out the word by simply tapping the keys that the letters are on, and in the order they come in the word. The phone will detect and guess the word you're trying to convey. For the word _had_, for example, you would type _3, 1, 2 _and the mobile would assume that's the word you were going for. Most times it's correct, and it's quicker than typing out each letter individually."

"I'll say," Lestrade muttered. He still didn't see how this was better than simply calling, but realized that that was probably a question he would never get the answer to.

"Try it." Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest; it looked like a challenge. "Text me."

Never had two words sounded so threatening.

Lestrade bit his lip, looking down at his mobile, and slowly tapped out a message. He did each letter individually - painstakingly slow - and only had to pause to correct two of them. He sent it, and for two breathless seconds waited for Sherlock's mobile to go off.

_Hello, git._

Sherlock frowned at the words on his screen and fired off a text in response.

_Says the old man who had to learn how to text from a sociopath._

_Touché_, Lestrade thought, though he always suspected sociopathy was a convenient self-diagnosis for Sherlock to hide behind.

"I still don't see how this will come in handy," Lestrade grumbled, pocketing his mobile.

"At least you'll answer my messages now," Sherlock said smugly.

"Is that all that matters?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, without a moment's consideration.

xxxx

Two years later, Lestrade was staring at the smoldering remains of what had been a pool, trying to comprehend the scant amount of information given to him by a man claiming to be a government official. He was one of the first on the scene and, amid the smoke and the chaos, was trying to figure out where to even _begin._

Sherlock had been in that building. Sherlock and John. And, if the post on his forum was anything to go by, Sherlock had gone in of his own volition. Probably to meet the bomber who had been pulling all those civilians off the streets and strapping Semtex to their chests - Lestrade wasn't nearly as much of an idiot as Sherlock assumed. He wasn't going to try to pretend to himself that the press-ganged suicide bombers weren't connected to this bombing.

Lestrade felt his pocket buzz suddenly, and pulled out his mobile.

_N side of bldg. Under beam._

"People!" he bellowed to the officers around him, throwing up an arm to grab their attention. "Holmes is alive! North side of the building. He's under a beam! Let's get moving. There's no time to wait for the rest of the rescue crews. They'll just have to join us."

To Sherlock, he typed, _We're coming. Don't move._

The response came in two minutes later. _Where would I go?_

There was a pause while Lestrade coordinated his team, and then a new text came in: _John_

They hadn't found him yet, but Lestrade still typed, _Safe. We have him._

_good_

_Are you hurt? _he asked, texting with one hand while directing Donovan and Anderson.

_brkn leg, perhaps_

Lestrade cursed under his breath, even though a broken leg was mild compared to what Sherlock could have suffered. An entire building had, after all, come down around his head.

_Hang on._

It took more than an hour to get to Sherlock, whose texts got more sporadic as the time wore on. They also decreased in coherency, but Lestrade tried to keep him typing. Anything to tell him that Sherlock was still alive, and still had most of his faculties about him.

The texts stopped entirely fifteen minutes before someone moved aside a piece of rubble and found a bloodied hand, and for a moment all of them stood around it, staring, not daring to touch it for fear of what they might find. And then two fingers twitched and lifted, and Lestrade reached for it as the rest of his team scrambled into action, removing the rest of the rubble from around Sherlock's body.

Lestrade clutched the hand and bellowed down into the rubble, but no response was forthcoming. A dusty and bloody body was slowly revealed as the rest of the debris was cleared, and he let out a soft exhalation of breath as they finally uncovered Sherlock's head and upper torso.

The detective's lips moved, and for a moment Lestrade was too transfixed by the drying blood at the corner of his mouth to register what he was saying. Then he ducked his head until his ear was nearly at Sherlock's lips, and he could make out the whispers.

"See?" Sherlock rasped to him.

"See what?" he asked, baffled, drawing back. Sherlock's eyes followed him, and his gaze flicked to the mobile, which Lestrade had dug out of his pocket again and was clutching as though it was a safety line. Lestrade thought he could detect the barest traces of a smile on Sherlock's lips as he spotted the device.

"Came in handy...after all."


End file.
